A Murder of Crows, A Conspiracy of Ravens
by Arsenic In Your Tea
Summary: When Matthias, heir to the throne, is murdered by his own brother, assisted by a member of the Selection, the burden of the crown falls to the youngest brother, Silas, who was never prepared for the duty. A brewing conspiracy casts a shadow across the entire Selection, and Silas must decide who he trusts, who he loves - and whether the two might not be the same. SYOC open, 7/15.
1. Chapter 1

_All the dead kings came to me_  
 _At Rosnaree, where I was dreaming,_  
 _A few stars glimmered through the morn,_  
 _And down the thorn the dews were streaming._

 _And every dead king had a story_  
 _Of ancient glory, sweetly told._  
 _It was too early for the lark,_  
 _But the starry dark had tints of gold._

\- Francis Ledwidge

* * *

It had been a beautiful night for a gorgeous opera. Of that, there could be absolutely no denying. The stage far below was a chaotic tumult of color and silken skirts, crimson and emerald and gold swirling, bare skin slick with perspiration beneath the glare of the theater lights. The dances were intricate and involute, the dancers adroit and adept, more poetry in movement than any true pageant of physical power. And every so often, from the teeming rout of terpsichoreans and impresarios, would rise a very high note, refined to such perfection that spectators lowered their lorgnettes for fear they might shatter there and then. The audiences were awash in shadow, a mere penumbra of murmurs and rustles from which no individual face or word might be distinguished from the mass that accompanied them.

It had been a very long time since Azeria had found her seat among their number. Her place had, for a very long time, belonged to the gold-wrought, silver-fretted splendour of the royal viewing box high above. Not at directly at the spectator balcony, of course, where twin velvet-backed chairs supported the two reclining crown princes of this nation they had once called Illea, and not even in the two wing chairs that clustered near them, like courtiers clustered to fawn over an aristocrat. No, Azeria's place was in the shadows of the opera box, a kind of strange lonely audience to the royal family and all they observed and all that observed them.

A good bodyguard, her mother had always told her, required three things more than anything else: eyes like a corsac fox, skin like a moloch, and the bite of a tsetse fly. And Azeria was a very good bodyguard. She doubted a hawk watching the royal brothers would have noted as many subtle details as she did, even as she cast her eyes about the broad, dark theatre and listened intently to the dramaturgy unfolding beneath. She supposed familiarity had to help a little with the task; another might have noted Matthias' crossed legs, the relaxed way he leaned against the arm of his chair to speak softly to his brother, the languid manner in which he flicked his gaze towards the rostrum, and the singer there who was bathed in golden light.

But Azeria, who had been playmate and confidant and something akin to sister in the young princes' childhood, adolescence and adulthood, could clearly perceive below Matthias' equanimous facade: the dark shadows under his eyes, the too-tight grip he kept on the stem of his wine glass, the way he pushed his hair back almost on a reflex.

The opera was nearing its conclusion. Azeria could not say she was too sorry to see it end - she always did find such opuscule difficult to follow at the best of times. The stage seemed to heave with energy and tension, from which the prima donna, clad in the long sage cloak of Leonora, emerged to belt out a final plea for reprieve from the stoic, stalwart baritone who had pursued her across the stage. It had not escaped Azeria's notice that Matthias seemed particularly transfixed by one figure in particular - nor his brother's, for the younger prince spoke sotto voce with a smile in voice.

"In the middle of your Selection?" Yves spoke with a conspiratorial tone. "Oh, Matya, that is poor behaviour. Even for you."

"You cannot judge me," the crown prince replied. "For admiring a young woman's talent."

"Was it her talent you were ogling? You must forgive me for misinterpreting."

Matthias' voice was dismissive. Even in the gloom of the theatre, Azeria could picture very clearly how he would comport himself in this moment: ankles crossed, elbow on the arm of the chair, fingertips grazing across his lips, mouth curved in a half-smile. "Can you really blame a man for growing bored of something so tedious as a Selection?"

Yves shook his head. His hair was a little long again, grazing his collar and curling about his jaw, giving him a slightly boyish look that reminded Azeria of summers past. As children, she had given him a very radical haircut with a pair of blunt, borrowed scissors, and been thoroughly scolded for vandalising national property in doing so. Youth, she thought, had done a good job of erasing the divides between prince and protector. Certainly the young children who had been Matya and Ivo and Zeri and even tiny Si had never truly imagined the day would come when the brothers would recline in front of an opera and their childhood companion would silently stand sentry in the shadows behind them.

"Oh, yes," Yves said. "I imagine those beautiful girls have you wearied beyond belief."

"Thirty-five look alike after a while," Matthias replied. "Especially when they're all playing at intrigue... and sleeping in their own beds."

Even after two years out of the army, Yves still carried himself like a solider, Azeria thought - not in his discipline, but in the coil of his muscles, the cautious, ready and wary manner in which he reclined, like he was daring the world to creep closer so he might snatch it and wring its neck. "I suppose one must embrace his bachelor days to their utmost, _ya prav_?"

"Everything is malicious in that head of yours, Ivo." Glancing over his shoulder, Matthias caught Azeria's steady, unmoving gaze. His smile seemed almost reflexive, like it had slipped from his muscles without any clear intention or consent. "Some things never change. Wouldn't you agree, Zeri?"

"I wouldn't dare," she said, straight-faced and dead-pan. "To disagree. Your Royal Highness."

Yves rolled his eyes and raised his wine to his lips. "You always did side with him." He tipped the glass between his fingers and watched the dark liquid swirl within, his eyes distracted and far away for the briefest of moments, a question flickering across his expression and disappearing again before Azeria had chance to identify it. "It is a shame the little bibliosoph was not able to leave his precious library for to join us for even an evening," he added, a rueful note in his voice. "I feel rather outnumbered without Silas." He set down his glass and stood, his long dark jacket swinging gently. "More wine." He held up a hand to quieten the serving boy who started from the shadows. "Please, don't worry. I'll get it myself - could do with stretching my legs. Preference, Matya?"

"Absinthe." The crown prince had returned his gaze to the stage.

Yves' lips tightened in dry mirth, and he exchanged a meaningful look with Azeria before he turned to depart the box. When he opened the door, golden light spilled into the space like the tide rushes into the beach. The sudden glare illuminated clearly the two Selected girls who were seated in the wing chairs along the edge of the box: Lady Inbidia, with her plum silks puddled about her, quartz shining like unshed tears in her hair, her fingers overburdened with gold rings that glowed even in the faint light from the stage; Lady Sabela, her eyes pools of calligraphy ink in the darkness, her blood-colored dress drawn furtively around slender limbs, a red jewel the color of a mimic-kite swallowtail glinting like a dagger from her hair. Neither girl looked ruffled by the discussion which had just passed audibly only a few inches away from them; their expressions remained, Azeria thought with some ruefulness, contentedly complacent and peaceably placid, as though they believed that any external expression of emotion might be enough to pluck the throne from their grasp.

Azeria had been watching the Selection as best she could from the shadows, feeling for Matthias' future the strange kind of protectiveness that only a childhood friend could. She could not say that she considered a single member of the Selected suitable for the crown prince. A conniving lot, she had told her father on the very first evening of the competition, a conniving murder of ravens descended upon the castle with greedy, gaping maws and lies woven into their hair.

Her father had said, _with metaphors like that, I know you've been spending too much time with Silas._

It was easier with Silas. Less strange. The youngest prince had never allowed himself to forget the times when aristocrat and attendant were more than acquaintance. If Matthias had been her childhood half-twin, Azeria thought wryly, and Yves the wild younger brother fighting to prove himself scrappy enough to play with the older children, then Silas had always rather resembled some kind of stray kitten, adopted and arrogated without much attention paid to him.

Much like Yves, she found she rather missed the third prince's quiet presence tonight. On the stage below, the mezzo-soprano was lamenting a nostalgia for the lost mountains of her youth, the action surging around her while she remained a single, frozen point of stillness within the turbulence. Definitely coming to a climax, she thought to herself, and shifted her weight almost imperceptibly as thought to brace for the last few long, boring minutes. Despite her attempt at subtlety, Matthias' clever eyes found her again, an amused sympathy in his gaze. "Not much longer now, Zeri." He indicated Yves' abandoned chair with the lip of his glass. "You might as well steal it while he is gone."

"I do not neglect my duties, your Royal Highness."

"That seemed rather pointed, even for you, Azeria," Matthias replied, laughing mirthlessly under his breath as the door swung open again to admit Yves' return.

"I'm afraid I couldn't find any absinthe," the dark-haired prince said wryly, offering his older brother the tiny phial in his left hand. The dark maroon liquid swirled within. "What did I miss?"

"The count's war is going poorly," Matthias replied casually, accepting the glass without looking at his brother. Azeria thought he must be correct. On-stage, the beautiful prima donna had already succumbed to her suicide by poison, and the count was about to execute his philandering troubadour brother with some relish. Pseudo-corpses littered the open spaces.

"What war has ever gone well?" Yves caught Matthias glancing at the phial with curiosity, and answered a question that was not asked. " _Sombai_. It's quite bitter."

The slightest hint of a genuine smile flashed across Matthias' face at these words, and he inclined his head towards Azeria. "Oh," he said. "I'm used to a little bitter." He raised his glass to touch it against Yves'. "To our parents."

"To the king," Yves replied. "And to the nation."

They drained their glasses.

A rustle in the corner. Lady Sabela was adjusting her skirts. Azeria could not move her eyes from the dark liquid. She could remember drinking _sombai_ with the boys when they were in the very earliest days of adolescence, hiding in the stables and taking it in turns to sip furtively from the clay mug they had half-filled with water to dilute the overwhelmingly sweet taste of the alcoholic beverage, giggling and gossiping with half-drunken mirth. They had felt very grown up, she thought, in those days, long before they knew what responsibility or fear was. She could still almost taste the sugary-sweet flavour on her lips, so fresh was the memory.

Sweet, Azeria thought. Sweet.

Not bitter.

"Matya, _don't_ ," she cried, but it was too late because the glass had already slipped from beneath his fingers and crashed into a thousand pieces on the floor below.

What happened next all happened very quickly. Matthias' legs gave out from beneath him - he fell into the railing which overlooked the stage, and then collapsed to the ground, all his breath escaping him in a single, pained, rattling gasp. A scream rose in the crowd below, not because of Matthias but because of the smoke which had abruptly begun to billow from from the orchestra pit as an inferno slowly grew to blazing. A knife glinted in Lady Sabela's hand as she produced it and slashed at Lady Inbidia with a violent determination, and shouted for Yves to run. And Yves just stared at his brother's prone form and, very slowly, lowered himself to his knees.

"Brother," Yves was saying, very softly, almost under his breath, the merest whisper even as Azeria's hands found his hair and his collar and the bare skin of his throat and pulled him away from the corpse with the desperation of duty and the despair of grief.

"Matya." And Azeria could not say if it was she or Yves who pleaded the prince's name. "Matya." There was blood on his lips, staining the starched white of his shirt, falling from his face like accumulated tears. " _Matya_."

The prince could reply nothing, because he was already dead.

Yves' voice was the fragmented spectre of anguish. " _Prosti menya._ "

 _Forgive me._

* * *

 **Welcome to my SYOC! I hope you liked this little preview of what is to come.**

 **Here's the elevator pitch: _The kingdom of Illea_** ** _has been at war for as long as anyone alive can remember._ _When Matthias, heir to the throne, is murdered by his very own brother, assisted by a member of the Selection, the heavy burden of the crown falls to the youngest brother, Silas, who has never been prepared for the duty. A brewing conspiracy casts a shadow across the entire Selection as the manhunt continues for his brother, and Silas must decide who he trusts, who loves - and whether the two might not be the same._**

 **You can find the rules and form on my profile. Please, please send me a review to tell me what you think so far!**


	2. Chapter 2

_And you thought the lions were bad,_  
 _Well, they tried to kill my brothers,_  
 _And for every king that died  
Oh, they would crown another -_  
 _But it's harder than you think  
Telling dreams from one another._

\- Dan Smith

* * *

It was a cold, clear day, and the ideal sort of occasion with which to bury a king-that-would-never-be.

A cold and biting zephyr was ghosting across the sharp face of the northern-most cliffs, buffeting the sparse foxglove and angrec that had survived the cruel preceding autumn and pulling at the black garb of the gathered mourners as though to tear them asunder where they stood. There had been no rain, not today and not last night; black umbrellas hung unused in black gloves. It was the merest bare skeleton of a day, without much to distinguish it - it seemed as though not even the sun itself had roused enough motivation to shine on this most sepulchral of days.

Only a bijou retinue had been permitted to attend the burial, the most invaluable of courtiers and the most distinguished of nobles gathered together in a tight knot of secretives glances and suspicious bearings. Azeria Kaitse, it appeared, had not been counted among them. The long-serving regent and the newly-ordained heir stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the lip of the grave, their visages unreadable, their body languages impassive, even at this strangest and most momentous of occasions. For all the novelty accorded by this rare public appearance, there was little to distinguish Silas from the score of young aristocrats which had convened for these obsequies: he was tall and slender, with the same dark hair and broad, handsome features shared with his older brothers, somewhat older looking than his short years entirely warranted. If one cared to look closely - as people in the royal court often did - they would note that even for the most solemn moment, he still wore some ink on the tips of his fingers, that he still bore thin bandages on his inner wrists, disappearing under the cuff of his starched shirt, that he had shadows under his eyes that spoke of late nights and little sleep.

He had directed his gaze quite resolutely away from the casket which had headed the procession, the rich deep mahogany of the coffin almost invisible beneath the enormous bouquets of rich red and white flowers and flowering bushels of lace and the silk royal standard which had been draped across the cist as a blanket might be drawn across the prone form of a sleeping child. The ostentatious display of excess would not entirely have displeased Matthias, were he alive to see it; he had always held himself to be a man of fine taste, refined not through any sort of formal education but by, in the dead man's old words, "trying out absolutely everything and keeping the best".

He had clearly intended to apply that thinking to his Selection, and had made no secret amongst his few confidants of how he so resented the facades maintained by the girls who had been drafted into appearing before him, how he disliked being asked to select one identical figure from among three dozen, how little success he ever seemed to have in penetrating their outer shells of obsequiety - or anything else, for that matter. _My reputation has clearly preceded me in the press_ , he had said to Azeria and Yves, a sentiment which recurred the longer the Selection dragged on. _Do they think me blind, or do they think me stupid?_

 _They think you a typical man_ , Azeria had said dryly at the same moment that Yves had said, quite wryly, _are they wrong?_

They _had_ been wrong, but they had probably realised that fact far too late. None of the members of the Selection had been permitted to attend the burial, though a keen eye might have noticed that the remnants of the Elite had been quarantined in the chapel during the service to a single row of cloisters, each beautiful girl resplendent in stygian dress, as anonymous behind their lace veils as they had appeared on the first day of the Selection when they were merely a single unlucky wight among thirty five of the same kind. Now they were one of seven, their numbers whittled by betrayal and trauma and suspicion, one of them in the wind and one of them in the infirmary and one of them in the oubliette. Each of the remaining seven was dressed as half-a-widow, for though none had been bride to Matthias on the day of his death, it was quite certain that one of them would have been. In another world, perhaps, a world without belladonna and arsenic and hemlock, one of them would have been queen.

The spectre of the tergiversator Lady Sabela, who was now more commonly known throughout the kingdom as Luhar the traitor, had cast a broad, dark shadow across the entire ceremony, the knowledge of what her absence meant writ large on the expression of every man and mourner. The guards of the kingdom had sifted through the ashes and cinders of the destroyed opera house, and of the accomplice found no trace. The official line was that the renegade Prince Yves had been confined to quarters for as long as was necessary to catechize him on the conspiracy against Matthias' life, for even in such disgrace was it unthinkable to relegate a member of the royal family to the squalor of an ordinary cell, but of Luhar there had been no word. It was her role in the murder, almost more so than that of the dead man's own brother, that had preoccupied the minds of the regime over the past few days, for while it was rare to vet one's own flesh-and-blood, the members of the Selection and every detail of their lives had been thoroughly interrogated prior to their admittance to the palace. The idea that a murderess had escaped detection with all the scrutiny heaped upon the palace was a terrifying prospect, and one which made the idea of organising a Selection for the new heir an even more daunting and impossible task.

And yet, Lord Elias was quite inexorable on the matter. On this matter, it seemed, there could be and would be no swaying the regent to another point of view. He would broker no argument, no advice, no animadversion. And it seemed that at this early juncture in his ersatz reign, Silas was little inclined to offer his input on the topic, so that in lieu of an imperial mandate to the contrary, the papers were drawn up and the communiqués were sent out and the search was poised to begin all over again, before Matthias'body was even cold in the soil.

When the hole in the ground had been filled and the mass of repiners disbanded, Silas stood for a very long moment at the precipice of the grave, staring at the plaque that marked its head with an abstruse expression that suggested he was lost in thought rather than reading the engravings there so marked. The breeze gently lifted his hair, pulling it from its strained perfection into something more closely resembling his normal self, his appearance a little more ragged and scattered, betraying a mind better crafted for poetry and cartography than for considering questions of murder and betrayal, less suited to diplomacy and making war than his brother had been before him. Their dynasty was a young one, still mired in the death throes of the one that had preceded it, and with a regime's youth came its need to defend itself. The Varas family had come to power only three or four generations past, overthrowing the decadently corrupt Schreave clan that had preceded them, and Silas knew that there were many in the kingdom who still believed them foreigner interlopers, usurpers of the throne, pretenders to the crown. Even those who had initially supported them had begun to question Matthias' more... _wanton_ customs. Illéa was still waging wars to the south and to the east, straining to assert itself against those who believed it to be vulnerable in its turmoil. That would have been a daunting prospect by itself - adding a civil rising to the equation was as dynamite to a bonfire.

And amid it all, Silas thought, a Selection. The Selection had, in its own way, killed his brother and consigned Silas to a lamentable existence under the leaden burden of a crown he had never asked for - or indeed considered to be his, by rights. It was not a shirking of responsibility that motivated him to think so, only the quiet dissatisfaction that rose in his veins when he considered his new position, elevated from a place where he could do some paltry amount of good for the kingdom to a pedestal from which he could only play foolish games of smoke-and-daggers with pretty girls aspiring to be pretty queens.

 _You will find someone to love_ , Azeria had assured Matthias at the outset of his Selection, _someone to whom you can gift your heart_ , but truth be told if Silas still possessed a heart that he could call his own, he wasn't exactly convinced it made gift-giving material. The death of Matthias had brought many things home to the young prince, not least among them the fact that with all of these skeletons tumbling out of concealed closets, he wasn't entirely sure his own secrets were going to remained buried and forgotten for long.

Elias was standing on the path back towards the cars, his body angled so that he was looking not towards Silas, but across the many mausoleums and graves of the many kings and queens who had faltered and fallen and faded in the ages gone by. The chilled air lifted the hem of his coat as though in jest, a biting cold that did not pull but crept past layers to reach skin. Silas put his hands in his pockets, and took a last look at his brother's tombstone.

It read, very simply: _Matthias Varas, taken before his time_.

Any onlooker would have hardly guessed it belonged to anything other than an ordinary man.

And below that again, the epigraph chosen by his successor. Silas could still remember Yves speaking those words to him at the funeral of their father, when brother and brother and brother had sat shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder in the black car that trailed the hearse, and Matthias had been silent with the enormity of his new responsibility. Yves had been newly returned from the Federation, hardly recognisable as the older brother who had been sent as a token of peace tidings to their kingdom's old enemy. He had returned a young man, rogueish and rational, speaking a foreign tongue like he had never had reason to speak another - " _ah, little brother, you must remember: kogda korol' umret, sozday yeshche odnogo_ ".

 _When the king dies, just create another._

It was a cold, clear day, and the ideal sort of occasion with which to bury a king-that-would-never-be.

* * *

 **SYOC is still open!**


	3. Chapter 3

_You told him you loved him_  
 _But push had come to shove_  
 _And there are no easy answers_  
 _Mixing money and blood  
_ _  
_ _He was gone in an instant._  
 _They said nobody was spared._  
 _Not gonna tell you he loved you._  
 _Not gonna tell you he cared._

 _I won't go and rip you apart_  
 _Won't tell you "you could be king"_  
 _I don't want to break your heart.  
_ _(You asked me, you asked me)_

 _Oh no, did it rip you apart?_  
 _To be told we could be kings when we were damned from the start?_

\- Dave Hause

* * *

In the weeks that had passed since Matthias' murder, his killer's hair had grown long and ragged, his skin wan from the lack of sunlight, his eyes shadowed by an obvious inability to sleep. Azeria couldn't say she felt sorry for him. If it was guilt that kept him awake, so be it. It was the very least with which he could begin to pay for what had happened to his brother.

She refused to sympathise, but she could definitely empathise. Sleep was elusive for the girl these days. So this was what disgrace felt like, she thought - disgrace and despair and desperation all at once. How often since that night at the opera had she awoken with the sudden, awful, all-consuming yearning to race across the cobbles that separated the barracks from the royal wing of the palace, to force open the doors to Matthias' sleeping chambers and let the story spill out of what an awful nightmare she had dreamed up in some frenzied fit of insanity, to have Yves laugh at the idea that he might be so cunning as to plan an assassination, to have Silas look at her with eyes that were not so utterly burdened with grief and solemnity?

He had not looked at her since the death, but she knew that it was only his intervention that had prevented her from being stripped of her rank and position and shot in the back garden as a failure. She had been reassigned to mundane duties around the capital - night patrols, prisoner transfers, border vigils - but every cramped, cold moment that she spent watching the jazz-club speakeasies or searching the trains as they crossed into Angeles was another moment that she spent thinking to herself _I am an accomplice to the murder of my best friend_. She had been as useful to Yves' plan as Luhar the traitor, she knew that now. Her close bond to the royal brothers had for so long been seen as an asset, but in the end it had blinded her to what had laid before her eyes. Before that night, she would never have believed or dreamed Yves a killer even if he had told her himself.

And now, staring straight-faced through the bars at the man she had once called brother, she would not have believed she ever could have loved him the way she had once, that blinding, blind kind of affection. What had happened to him in the Federation, she wondered, what had transpired during those long years as a hostage and peace-offering, to transform the kind, impulsive, thoughtful boy from her youth into a snake that would poison his own brother for something as petty as power?

No, she thought. He did not deserve sleep.

He had smiled when she came in, as though he expected a friendly smile in return, but he had said nothing. Azeria, for her part, had not allowed her mask to slip for even an instant. To be permitted back into some position of responsibility, even if it was merely to enter the underground oubliette which held the most dangerous criminals and the most deranged maniacs of the capital city, was not something she intended to take lightly. She stood as a newly-trained soldier, all straight-backed and firm-shouldered, and he lounged, languid as a lazing lion, back to the wall of his cell and his arms resting on his knees. His eyes were very, very dark indeed, she thought. Like little pools of black ink.

He had not fought the guards, had never resisted his arrest and detention. Indeed, in that very first moment, when Azeria had realised what had passed and she had reached for Matthias as he fell and felt her heart wrench in the guttural, visceral knowledge of that which she could not prevent, and all had been silent but for that gut-wrenching whisper ( _p_ _rosti menya)_ she could not deny that in her anger she would have gladly broken Yves' bones, driven the air from his lungs, stopped his heart, and she knew that in that fractured moment he probably would have let her, and said nothing, and resisted not.

In a way, she was grateful that the guards outside had rushed in to detain him. He did not deserve a quick death, and certainly not at hands as common as hers. Azeria, even now, could barely cope with one royal death on her conscience - to suffer two, so quickly together, might have ended her entirely, if she wasn't hanged for treason. Even a murderer prince was still a prince, after all. And even entirely apart from Yves' royal heritage, she thought, she could not have done that to Silas. She could not have left him entirely alone in this world.

That boy was lonely enough as it was.

In front of her, Yves moved slightly - she sharpened her gaze abruptly, every line in her body tense as though anticipating an escape attempt, even if it was merely him shifting his weight, brushing his hair from his eyes, curling and uncurling his fingers as though to alleviate a cramp. How quickly all things he did became detestable to her. What had once been mere innocent movements became ominous and vile. He had resisted all attempts at interrogation, all questions going unanswered, all exhortations and pleas for information ignored - why he had done it, with whom he had planned, and, most of all, absolutely anything about Sabela Luhar, the girl who had vanished into the aether as surely as a ghost might dissipate into fog like a dream forgotten upon waking.

Yves had said nothing, only smiled that same wan, slightly feral smile in the face of his interrogators and shook his head intermittently, as though ruefully dismissing their attempts at discerning the truth.

She wondered if he felt guilty.

She wondered if he knew where Luhar the traitor had gone.

She wondered if he believed that he would die down here.

So far from the sky...

Buried beneath the earth, like his brother.

"Kaitse!"

Azeria started at the sharp bark of her name, uttered by the commanding officer who appeared at the entrance to the stone hallway, his expression as impassive as Azeria's. She knew him well: Ronan Shard was the second-in-command of palace security, and had been the bodyguard of Matthias' father in his own time. He was a steel-spined figure, with tightly cropped salt-and-pepper hair and golden rings glinting at his fingers like something stolen - not exactly regulation uniform, she thought ruefully, but no one was ever going to be brave enough to tell Ronan Shard how to conduct himself. In her own time as part of the palace's security detail, she had never seen the man smile, and had always considered him something of a wraith. The less you saw of him, the better a job you were doing. She had spoken to him directly only twice - the first time, when she was making her case to earn the duty of guarding the king-that-was-yet-to-be; the second time, when she was being stripped of her title and expelled from the grounds.

So this time round made three.

"Sir!"

He waved away her salute, looking impatient, and gestured. "With me," was his guttural growl, his usual stoic scowl not even displaced by Yves' cheerful call of "good evening, Ronan! Or is it morning? You really can never tell down here..."

At the very least, Azeria thought darkly, she would not have felt too much guilt on her conscience about removing his tongue.

"Yes, sir," was her only reply, and as she stepped away from her post she noticed with droll amusement that a green-suited cadet had sprinted to step into her bootprints, so as not to leave Yves without watch for even a single instant. Azeria walked towards Shard, and then trailed in his wake as he turned to walk away before she had even reached him. She knew better than to ask any questions, as they ascended the spiraling stone steps which led down to the cells, and moved through the hallways of the security centre above. It was so quiet here, she thought - after all, with the Selection upcoming, they had called away every man and woman that they could spare to protect the palace and those who came to compete there.

The only hub of activity was the bureaucratic office across the courtyard, where the security services were running thorough checks on the backgrounds and families of those who had been Selected, uncovering even those relationships and underlying elements that perhaps they did not even know of themselves. Azeria could catch sight of only a few names - _Valentina, Jean-Josephine, Selina_ \- but the sheer number of files and papers which accompanied each girl's profile suggested that the security detail was absolutely committed to ensuring whatever oversight might have permitted Luhar the traitor to slip under the radar was eliminated. Azeria followed Shard to the desk at the back of the cavernous space, where he moved aside a few documents and did not look at her as he spoke. His words were clipped and sharp - they brokered no disagreement.

"The _prince,"_ he said, darkly, emphasising the words as though to absolve him of any responsibility attached to the decision. "Has ordered that you be returned to the palace without delay." From the disheveled mess on his desk, he reshuffled and produced a short document in heavy vellum, penned in gold-leaf ink. He held it out to her, brusqueness attached to even the small motion. "You are to serve as a personal protection officer for the duration of the Selection. Do you understand?"

Azeria blanched. She did not need a mirror to know that the colour had drained from her face; all of the thoughts which she had stewed and flagellated herself in the past long hours and days and weeks seemed to rise in her throat as a solid knot of thorns, as physical and tenable as if she had swallowed a bunch of roses. That, she knew, was Shard's technicalisation of the term _bodyguard_. For whom? Who was she going to get killed this time? She held out her hand and took the paper and perceived through her daze that the word _Silas_ was writ large upon the parchment.

Shard's sharp voice cut across her thoughts, or rather, her hazy lack thereof. "I'll take it that you _do_ understand, then. Any questions?"

"Sir, I -"

"None? Good. Dismissed."

"Sir, but I -"

"I said _dismissed_ , Kaitse."

She started. Blinked. Put her boots together and bowed from the waist. "...sir."

She turned. Opened the door. Stepped out.

 _No_ , she thought. _No, please._

 _What if I get him killed too?_

At the click of footsteps, she looked up to see Silas approaching. _Little Si_ , she thought, somewhat overwhelmed. He still did not look like himself: the same tall, slender figure, now with hollow eyes and hair grown too long and crow's eyes around his eyes from scowling, clad in a waistcoat rumpled as though he had slept in it and polished black shoes with scuffs at the toes where she knew he had taken the stairs in twos. His hair was slicked back from his face, the neatness of the style at odds with every other element of his appearance.

She wondered how long it had been since he had seen the interior of a library.

She wondered if he knew his bandages were visible from under the cuff of his shirt.

She wondered if he meant to look her in the eye as he passed.

He inclined his head. "Zeri," he said softly as he stepped up to the door of the office. "See you back at the palace?"

Azeria paused, and nodded. She flashed a practised, polite smile. "See you back at the palace, your Highness," was her reply, and she watched as Silas stepped into the office and shut the door - quite firmly - behind him.

She almost smiled at the realisation that this meant she would have to endure a second Selection. _May they be more likable than the last lot_.

 **Sorry about the delay with this update! We return to our original viewpoint character - I know a lot of people have said they dislike Azeria, so hopefully she's a little more palatable now.**

 **The Selection is still open and accepting characters! So far I have accepted seven characters:**

 **Atlin -** Selina Law  
 **Carolina -** Aquila Linh Nguyen  
 **Columbia -** Jean-Josephine Alianovna Galanis  
 **Dominica -** Valentina Sofí Reyes  
 **Fennley -** Candace Annilee Hurst  
 **Hansport -** Katrina Isla Arina Conte  
 **Likely -** Claudia Jeenpak


End file.
